HP was the top selling tablet vendor in the US - ignoring Apple, of course - through to the end of October, and it's all thanks to the TouchPad firesale.

Market watcher NPD yesterday revealed that in the ten months from January to October inclusive, HP accounted for 17 per cent of non-iPad tablet retail sales, a percentage point above second-placed Samsung.

Asus followed with ten per cent of sales, just ahead of Motorola and Acer, both of which took nine per cent of the market.

All the others, including HTC and RIM, jointly took the remaining 39 per cent.

NPD said 1.2m non-iPad tablets crossed sales counters in the ten-month period. Apple shipped 25m iPads worldwide during the first nine months of the year - half of those were likely US sales. Whatever the figure, US iPad sales would have to be weak indeed if that territory's proportion were close to the sales of other tablets.

Of course, with almost all TouchPads - if not actually every one of them - now sold, HP's share will plunge. Samsung is likely to grab the top slot, but Amazon's Kindle Fire will surely be close behind - if not ahead of it. ®